


today i drove through the suburbs and pictured i was driving home to you

by blixciit



Series: i got my drivers license [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Feels, Break Up, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Heartache, Heartbreak, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Open to Interpretation, Post-Break Up, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:54:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28708503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blixciit/pseuds/blixciit
Summary: Louis replies.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Series: i got my drivers license [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2104443
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	today i drove through the suburbs and pictured i was driving home to you

**Author's Note:**

> Links to listen to "drivers license" by Olivia Rodrigo posted in part 1!

Dear Harry,

Congratulations on your driver's license. I know we always talked about it. How it was a huge milestone and that it meant you were officially a grown up. How you would be able to drive to school on your own and not cry about having to take the bus if I decided to take a sick day. You really did hate taking the bus, didn’t you?

You were pretty shit at driving in the beginning, you remember that? You didn’t just hit the curb, you completely bodied it. Literally drove over the entire thing. You sat there in the middle of the street in total shock for five minutes trying to process what had just happened. After the second time you did it I made you sit on the grass and calm down. You really worried me that day. I thought you were never going to improve.

Really making me seem like a terrible driver over there, huh? Yes, I totalled the Prius, but it was only half my fault. That old bag of a woman was going too slow so I went to pass her and she just didn’t want me to do that, I guess. She just swerved over at the same time I did and it all happened at once. The K turn incident was totally my fault, though. I could have sworn it was a dead road. I was wrong.

I think the parallel parking day was my favorite, too. You’re right, I did pick out the corgi shirt. But you can’t blame me. T-shirts that make no sense are so much funnier than any other t-shirt that… does make sense. You smelled good that day. I mean, you always smelled good, but it was like… exceptionally good that day. I still have that video of you skipping out to my car in my Snapchat memories. Want to know a secret? It gave me butterflies, too. 

Because I did realize. I knew, Harry, I knew. I even noticed the moment that you figured out what you were feeling. 

You didn’t just blush when I called you ‘love,’ you turned red all the way to the tips of your ears. You tried to hide behind your hair, or you would pretend to have an itch on your eyebrow and cover your face with your hand. Your hands were shaky all the time (whether or not it was because of me I’m not sure), but they got even shakier. You smiled a lot around me, did you ever notice that? Like, you’re a smiley boy, horrifically charming, but it was just constant when I was around.

The only reason I know that is because of my friends. They saw how you were around everybody else. That you were a bit on the quiet side, which I always knew, and that you had a tendency to smile out of politeness rather than genuineness. But I knew that yours was genuine when you were with me. Nobody knows your eyes better than I do. And you know how I know that?

I was in love with you, too.

I can’t believe you hadn’t noticed sooner. I’d loved you since I first met you, before I knew what the hell love even was. I saw you sitting by yourself at the playground just looking around and it made my stomach swoop. The boys I was with called me a ‘stupidhead’ for leaving them to hang out with you, but I had to. You stuck out to me. Probably to everyone else, too, because you were wearing purple shorts and a puke green hat that was far too big for your already oversized head, but especially to me. I walked over and said that I liked your shoes. You were wearing plain old white nikes, but I had to start somewhere. You told me that my hair was cool.

So it started there. When we hit middle school, we never really saw each other in school. Because of that, I made my mom drive me to your house every other day for playdates. 

I came out to myself in seventh grade. 

I never told anybody. It was the day that Stan got his first girlfriend. I listened to him talk about her. About how her hair smelled of vanilla and her lips tasted like cherries. How her lip gloss was sticky. I remember that grossing me out. I went home that day and just... thought. I remember thinking “Harry’s lips don’t look sticky.” Then I thought “well why am I thinking about Harry’s lips?” About five minutes later I thought “because I like Harry.” “I like Harry’s lips.” “Harry’s lips wouldn’t be sticky if I kissed them.”

The next time I saw you I kept looking at your lips. I was right, they weren’t sticky, because I came up with some half-assed excuse to touch them. I said, “let’s play a game,” and I made you close your eyes and guess what item I was touching you with. It started with a tissue. I touched your cheek with a tissue. Then it was a shoe, then a scarf, then a T.V. remote. And then it was my fingers. I touched your lips, ran the pads of my index and middle fingers across them and just… felt. You giggled. “Lou, those are your fingers!”

“Correct!”

You never questioned it then. Never asked about why I would just stare at you in awe sometimes, or how I would rub up and down your arm if we were just sitting and watching a movie. Maybe you thought I was just touchy or something. But didn’t you see me with anybody else? I never even let my mother touch me.

There was another time, my freshman year. You were upset because we attended different schools. We were sitting on your bed. It was a Wednesday, right after school. You were nearly in tears, complaining to me about your new teachers and how you didn’t have any other friends that you talked to as much as you talked to me. That day was one of the first times I thoroughly comforted you. I brought my hand to your face and pulled you into me, cradling you in my arms. I kissed your face. On your cheek, eyebrow, forehead. I kissed the top of your head. I held you for hours until my mom came to pick me up. Why didn’t you ever question that?

I guess that’s not really my place to say. Like you said, you’ve always had a hard time expressing how you felt about things. 

At this point (if you didn’t throw this note in the trash the second you saw who it was from), you’re probably reading this and clenching your fists. I wouldn’t doubt it if you threw a pillow at the wall or something. I wouldn’t blame you. You probably want to kill me. But I might as well add some gasoline to your fire by explaining myself. 

The night I turned 19 was the night that I realized that everything would change. When I noticed that you finally understood your feelings, I wasn’t afraid to make a move anymore. Or so I thought. 

So I kissed you. Your lips weren’t sticky like Stan’s seventh grade girlfriend’s. They were red and chapped from the cold and they were every beautiful word a person could possibly use to describe something indescribable. 

That moment felt like it would last an eternity. Like we were walking on ice but could never fall down. It had been snowing that night, and the world was completely silent around us. All I could hear was our heartbeats, beating rapidly in sync. You say that the moment could have been broken by the drop of a pin, but I think the opposite. A mack truck could have driven past and honked it’s horn and I wouldn’t have heard a sound.

I screamed my entire drive home that night. I took the long way, straight through the suburbs, and screamed. I never even turned the radio on. 

But I never went to sleep. I got back home at 6 A.M. and laid in bed for two hours until Phoebe and Daisy burst in, eager to open presents. I had the text typed out. At first I had added “I love you” to the end, but then I figured that you’d want to hear that in person. I was so ready. I was so excited.

But I was so fucking scared.

To be honest, I don’t really have any good explanation as to why I was scared. Maybe I thought that you weren’t… serious? Or something? I don’t know. I think I was just so afraid of losing you that I thought, “hey, if I leave him first, I’m getting it over with so that I don’t have to hurt when he (inevitably) leaves me.”

I cried for a week straight. Then I met… the blonde girl. 

She knows I never had feelings for her. I told her I was gay. The day we held hands was the day that I told her. I guess she thought that it was a good way to make me feel better. She probably assumed that I looked so wrecked because I had been stressing about it. In reality, I looked like a mess because I hadn’t stopped sobbing over you. 

I haven’t talked to the blonde girl in five days. She outed me to a group of boys that graduated last year and they’ve been privately messaging me on Instagram ever since, threatening to jump me. I ended up blocking her on everything. 

In the end, I began to realize that I had let go of the only thing I ever wanted. I let go of it the moment that I finally got it. That’s a pretty ungrateful thing to do.

My mom cried, too, when I told her that you wouldn’t be coming around anymore. I broke down and told her everything. All the things that I did and what had happened. She was the one that got the mail today.

She brought up your letter. She walked into my bedroom with a pale face. 

“You should probably take a look at this,” is what she said. I read your name and instantly felt nauseous.

I thought you were going to tell me about how much of a dick I am. Rip me a new one. Give me a detailed list of every bad thing I ever said or did to you. But then I remembered who it was from.

Harry Styles, the sweetest, most angelic and delightful boy to ever grace the world with his presence. (Wow that was gross I’m sorry)

Harry Styles, who is asking me if I ever loved him the way that he loved me because he was too humble to see that I was absolutely, completely, utterly enamoured with him.

I was never happier with anybody that wasn’t you. You brought out the best in me, always. You pulled me out of the cruel depths of my mind by just existing. By just looking at me with those innocently bright eyes. 

You have never, in our ten years of knowing each other, done anything wrong. A person like you is so hard to find in a world that has the ability to create a monster out of a virtuous soul. You are, in every aspect, heaven on earth. No word will ever exist that conveys how sorry I am for hurting your heart.

Throwing away everything we ever had would be equivalent to throwing my life away. You have become a part of me in a way that would seem quite naive to an outsider. We are so young. However, a person doesn’t just feel this type of emotion and pass it off as young love. That would be underestimating something truly remarkable. I have considered you my home, not only because you are my comfort, but because I will never feel as though I fit with anyone as intimately as I fit with you. 

I have thought of you while in the middle of doing something that has absolutely no connection to you whatsoever. I have thought of you while laughing. I have thought of you while yelling. While singing. While crying. Would it be dramatic to say that you’re one of the biggest reasons I do things? I live for you, Harry. You are, to put it simply, my other half. 

I have always loved you as a lover.

I love you more than words.

Always you.  
Yours Sincerely,  
Louis

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you again for reading, I hope you liked this short series!


End file.
